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Stocks To Play Off The Oil Cutback

The stopgap deal to drive up oil prices arranged at last month's OPEC meeting came with a number of open-ended questions about the efficacy of the measure and just what the impact might be on energy stocks.

Pavel Molchanov, senior vice president and equity analyst at Raymond James, appeared on Thursday's episode of Benzinga's PreMarket Prep to talk about which oil and energy stocks are on his radar and why the big brands might not be the best bet to win on rising oil prices.

Climate Of Oil

OPEC-member nations were considering the cutback for quite a while prior to the actual meeting. According to Molchanov, much of the continued impetus for the decision came from increased production from nations outside of the coalition, like Russia, Brazil, Mexico and the United States.

This increased diversity in oil suppliers drove down prices, which in turn has limited the growth of the industry. Molchanov emphasized, "The industry really need oil at least at $60 to grow supply at a sustainable basis."

Those conditions illustrate why OPEC's move to decrease supply was necessarily so drastic, as Molchanov explained. "OPEC, together with Russia and a few other countries are promising to cut supplies by more than 1.5 million barrels a day; we really doubt they will fully deliver on all of that. There is a history of cheating, of course, but even if they deliver half of that amount, that is a very meaningful reduction in supply, about 1 percent of global supply taken offline."